


Learning How to Survive (Living Comes Next)

by PeacefulDiscord



Series: It’s Our Pain That Binds Us [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Background characters - Freeform, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26575750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeacefulDiscord/pseuds/PeacefulDiscord
Summary: Naruto was born in blood and grief, bitter tears and broken smiles, and painfully alone. Kakashi didn't fit in this picture. There would be no healing if he were to stay and yet...
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Naruto, Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka, Umino Iruka & Uzumaki Naruto
Series: It’s Our Pain That Binds Us [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099763
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27
Collections: Kakashi Week 2020





	Learning How to Survive (Living Comes Next)

**Author's Note:**

> Characters/anime and some dialogue belongs to Masashi Kishimoto
> 
> Thanks @amyrallis for the fic title!

Naruto was born in blood and grief, bitter tears and broken smiles, and painfully alone.

Kakashi knew the feeling of being alone as well as he knew the weight of his mask on his face. As uncomfortable as it was at first, after time, it became familiar. A part of him that was now inseparable. He needed it, needed it like air, because being alone meant not having someone to lose. Someone like his father or Minato Sensei, fathers in every sense of the word that they could be. Someone like Obito or Rin or even Kushina-nee, people who gave him strength and support when he thought he didn’t need them at all. 

People who broke off pieces of him, hallowing him, when they left. 

And Naruto...Naruto may not know anything else. Kakashi could see it already-- the glares of disgust, hatred, and fear peering out of the wreckage to bear down on the baby oppressively, as if those tiny hands with fingers just barely long enough to curl around one of Kakashi’s was smeared with all the blood and carnage around them. Naruto would know nothing else.

Nothing but emptiness where the warmth of the love, as golden as Minato Sensei’s hair and as bright as the blue of his eyes, as fiery and vehement as Kushina, should be. 

He thought to his apartment, shabby and cold, where his goodbyes and “I’m home’s” were echoed by the four walls, and wiped the wetness off the baby’s whiskered cheeks. His whimpers faded, and Naruto turned his face into Kakashi’s hands, mouthing at his fingers. He could take care of him-- he made enough money and had the space for it. 

But then he looked back at the villagers. They still hadn’t looked at Kakashi and saw him as anything other than his traitor father’s spawn. He had no name or reputation to protect Naruto with, nothing that wouldn’t make the child’s life even more difficult. 

He looked to Genma, Raido, and Tatami, tattered and haggard but not so injured as to excuse their  _ failure _ \-- he swallowed the flare of rage burning at his core. 

That wasn’t fair. 

It wasn’t even right. Kakashi had seen them fighting but that masked  _ bastard _ \-- Tatami looked lost, staring at his hands and not moving an inch but that was nothing like Genma. The man was trembling, mouth empty of its usual senbon, all but clinging to Raido to keep himself upright. Kakashi had never seen him so uncomposed. 

He looked up, meeting Kakashi’s eyes through the mask. Wrenching himself away, much to Raido’s protest (and even he looked only a second away from shattering), the tokubetsu jonin stumbled towards him and Naruto, collapsing on the ground beside them and silently sobbed. 

“I’m sorry,” he croaked out, tracing a quavering hand through the sole tuft of hair on Naruto’s head. Tears dripped off his nose to land on the baby’s forehead and he roughly wiped at his face. “I’m sorry, Naruto-chan.” He looked up at Kakashi, choking on a gasp. “I’m sorry.”

Kakashi was too. Once again he had failed. Over and over, he let his loved ones down. 

Now he was alone.

“Dog-san, I will take Naruto.” Sandaime stood before him, hands outstretched. Pain and sorrow lined the man’s face like wrinkles, making him look older than his years. “I’ll make sure the village takes care of him.”

Kakashi didn’t look at Minato Sensei. He didn’t look at Kushina-nee. Carefully he pulled his fingers away from Naruto’s mouth and closed his eyes against the restarting cries.

It didn’t hurt to give Naruto to the Sandaime. Didn’t hurt to turn his back. Naruto would be better off without him anyways.

And if Kakashi couldn’t breathe--

Well, it would be better if no one suffocated along with him.

\--------------------------------------------

Out of all the ways to describe himself, “hypocrite” was never a word that came to mind. But it fit as well as his moniker. Better, even, because his sharingan skills were subpar compared to a true Uchiha like Itachi and maybe even Sasuke one day, but his hypocrisy seemed to grow with every breath he took and expelled. 

He watched the shinobi sitting on the bench below him, keeping in the shadows of the tree branches. Umino Iruka was more civilian-like in a way shinobi would shudder and find shame in being-- honest and passionate but reserved, hesitant and unsure in spite of his own abilities. He wasn’t someone that Kakashi would trust with Naruto-- Umino was only a chuunin, a teacher more than a fighter, and Naruto needed protection. He needed someone that the villagers wouldn’t dare upset with their acts of antagonism and abuse. 

And he wasn’t keen on trusting a man that let his own feelings guide him, letting their formation fail and letting even Naruto see that even his teacher would build walls around his heart to keep him out. 

It was obvious, annoyingly so. That same mix of bitter pity making the man’s face twist with scorn and anger that made Kakashi’s sharingan burn. Minato Sensei wanted his son to be seen as a hero. Umino didn’t see Naruto more than a sign broadcasting all that he lost.

Kakashi could see the hero. Could see it in Naruto’s resilience, see it in the way he hated his treatment but not the people who hurt him and knew the boy held a heart bigger than anyone.

But Kakashi still couldn’t do it. 

Naruto, a troublemaker in the making, needed attention that Kakashi, an active shinobi, could not give him. Needed consistency and someone to rely on the way Kakashi, looking more and more like his father every day, could not promise. 

Sensei’s son had just turned five, the same age as Kakashi when he came home to his father’s body strewn across the living room wood, sword and floor cold and sticky with dried blood. What could he promise? He wasn’t related to Naruto in any way and if his father couldn’t stick around for him, how could he say with certainty that he could for Naruto?

The last thing Naruto needed was to see a loved one, maybe his only loved one, dead on the floor.

Maybe Sandaime was right. Umino may not be able to always protect Naruto but, at the very least, he wasn’t at risk of killing himself. He was too dedicated to the village and his students to let them down-- determined to honor his parents’ sacrifice by guiding the youth they had died to protect.

Kakashi would look in the mirror, see his father’s face, and know he couldn’t say the same. He was getting closer to his father’s age. It would only be time before he followed the same path. 

Before then, he owed Naruto at least one person on his side. 

“Hey! That’s my special seat.” 

Iruka startled, staring up at him a bit nervously. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll move right away.”

Kakashi fought the urge to sigh, brushing the offer away. He finally got the man’s attention; he needed to make the most of it. “You don’t look good. I’ll listen to what you have to say, if you don’t mind.”

He didn’t really expect the man to start speaking so quickly, words flowing from him with more ease than it should considering who he was and who he was talking to, but Umino didn’t hesitate, baring his feelings out to Kakashi.

“I have no idea how I’m supposed to get closer to Naruto--” Umino grabbed his head in distress. “I’m not qualified to teach Naruto!”

“I see...so that’s why they’re dead. Your eyes. The eyes that sparkled back then are now dead.”

They’d been so, so bright when Umino declared he wanted to become a sensei at the academy. As if the Will of Fire was shining behind them. In that moment, Kakashi could only think that any child would be lucky to have the younger man as a sensei-- that he’d light the fires in their own hearts and souls and share with them his own reason to keep going, keep living. 

Telling him to open his heart to Naruto when Kakashi himself couldn’t even keep his eyes open to look at the boy was...perhaps unfair. But Kakashi was cold winter days, where the slate of his eyes weighed like lead and the frost colored like his hair spread from air to ground to limbs to blood until it froze your heart in your chest. 

Naruto needed Umino’s light.

“You’re the only one capable of opening up Naruto’s heart.”

Because hearts without love weren’t hearts at all-- closed, empty, beating things that made every pass of blood through veins like a slogging through mud, sludged and slow and wholly unwanted, clogging until you just wanted to stop. Stop beating, stop clogging, stop breathing. 

And for all of Naruto’s resilience, those blue eyes were dimming, shadowed by the hatred the villagers cast on him. Who knows when it would spread to his heart?

“Here. Give this to him.” 

The look of confusion on Umino’s face was expected. The little green pocket money purse was plain except for its frog-like appearance. But it had been Minato Sensei’s, a gift from Kushina and the last possession of his that Kakashi was able to hold on to after the battle. He’d put a portion of his pay in it from each paycheck he’d earned-- it should be enough for Naruto to buy better groceries and supplies and get him off that damn ramen-- and Kakashi was sure he could sneak more in it without the kid noticing. Besides, it was only right for Naruto to have it. Only right for Umino to give it to him.

The man with dead eyes and a kid whose eyes were dying.

The man with enough light in his heart to share and the kid with a heart worth lighting. 

They would be good for each other. They could save each other. The money purse would at least get them talking, it should help break the wall Naruto had begun putting up. 

Kakashi would be fine. He didn’t need the purse anymore. He had his memories and that...that was enough.

\--------------------------------------------

Naruto wasn’t nearly as clever as his parents, not even a fraction of it really. He was cunning when it came to pranks, sure, but otherwise dimwitted in a way that was equal parts amusing and frustrating. Much too preoccupied with being recognized by the rest of the village to even recognize himself or anything else that mattered. 

Everything was a challenge for him, something he needed to prove or win, and it was a wonder he didn’t do better. Kakashi would catch him sometimes, training early in the morning or late into the night, working overtime the way very few of his other classmates did. But he kept failing and kept acting as if he were better than everyone else, as if knowing him and being around him was some sort of privilege the way it was with the Uchiha and Hyuuga prodigies. 

That kind of desperate self-soothing, some pitiful attempt to salvage some other person’s scraps of ego to try and build his own confidence and self-worth made Kakashi’s stomach roil. Naruto was foolish, over-eager and unmannerly and far too quick to bluff and flounder. Again and again, the child made thoughtless mistakes, forever unable to make his brain work before his body acted, and even worse at remedying them. 

It clawed at Kakashi’s patience-- pulled the clamp he learned to put on his tongue, trying to twist it open and make him spit cruel words the way he did when he was young. And then Naruto would smile, grinning like he tasted victory on his tongue. Like it had spread through every fiber of his body, exuding like chakra for everyone else to take notice, nothing but wholly unrepentant in his triumph, even as fleeting as it was-- and that  _ hurt _ . 

The atrociously bright orange. The stupid, vehement selflessness--

Kushina favored Obito, it wasn’t any real secret, the same way Minato took to Kakashi, but it was as if Obito had been reincarnated, brought back with blonde hair and blue eyes as if by Kushina’s desire to have a child like him. Only this time… this time he was more alone than before. 

Kakashi found himself cursing the Sandaime. It had to have been on purpose. Anyone else could’ve been teaching Naruto. Anyone else would teach him  _ better _ . 

But the Hokage wouldn’t let him leave, the same damn way he wouldn’t let Umino when the man first tried to escape the same fate. If only they had failed. Every other team before them had but no. They had to break the rules and pass the test. 

And now Kakashi was stuck with him. All his loved ones meshed together in one body like the cruelest genjutsu.

It was like getting punched in the face again and again; every stupid act, every declaration and smile, and he shouldn’t-- his father would’ve been proud, respectful of such a person on the shinobi path. Rin would’ve helped Naruto succeed in every dream of his just as she did with-- he didn’t want to think that way. Naruto wasn’t Obito. Kakashi’s teammate, his  _ friend _ , was dead. Kakashi had the Uchiha’s eye in his head to prove it. This kid, Sensei and Kushina-nee’s kid, was not Obito and yet--

Kakashi was late much too often, daily even, and the excuses were becoming more and more pathetic until it was better to not give one at all. 

“Yo, Obito.” 

The Memorial Stone has been the most constant thing of Kakashi’s life, standing tall and clean as a stone could be when left to the weather, only changing as more lines, more names are etched across its surface. Talking to Obito was easier this way, easier than it was when the boy was alive and they couldn’t stand each other.

“He acts like you. Naruto. He wants to be Hokage too.”

And Kakashi told Obito how he wished he could change Naruto’s mind. That “Hokage” meant dying, it meant pushing too far and never seeing the end. Conflict would keep coming and going, war would keep knocking at their doors, and the only certainties were death and loss. 

But Naruto was determined, fiercely loyal to his loved ones and his dreams even if he was too foolish to see how appreciated he was for it yet.

“I hate it, Obito. I hate it more now--”

_ Now that I know where it led you _ , he thought. The words wouldn’t pass his lips, and he had to pull his mask away so he wouldn’t stain it with tears, but he was sure Obito would understand. He rubbed at his nose.  _ Now that I know where it led Rin and my father. _

He hated it. Hated that he knew where that spirit would lead. That he knew what blood looked like trickling from a mouth under bright blue eyes. 

For a horrible moment, he wondered if Naruto would die with a smile on his lips like his parents and hated himself more. He didn’t want to know. 

It wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t let himself find out. If he had to fight a battalion himself or throw himself onto his own kunai, then he would. He’d do it over a thousand times but he won’t watch Naruto die. 

It was better to have a ridiculous amount of hope over broken strength. Kakashi wasn’t so hard-hearted that he didn’t know which would be worse. Without purpose, without someone to keep you from being alone, existing felt unnecessary. A chore. Having no more meaning than the dirt beneath one’s feet and no person, shinobi or not, ever wanted to be so useless. 

“The mission-- I nearly failed, Obito. I tried to protect them and I--”

Zabuza had nearly killed them. Haku nearly killed them. Because Kakashi was too weak and unprepared and the only thing he accomplished was killing another child--

And it wouldn’t have meant anything. Not if Naruto didn’t yell at Zabuza (and it was the Kannabi bridge mission all over again. Obito was yelling at him, yelling at his cruelty and heartlessness and beating the sense into him), maybe they would have died. 

He wasn’t a good sensei. He hadn’t kept them safe or hadn’t taught them anything worthwhile but still Naruto gripped his hand. Held it tight when Sasuke and Sakura weren’t looking with sad, confused eyes resting on Haku’s fallen form--

(--blood on Kakashi’s other hand as warm and innocent as Rin’s, clinging and staining, tattooing each inch of skin with faltered breaths and staggered heart beats and even after all these years he still couldn’t get it off--)

\-- and asked if being a ninja really meant being some mindless too. Something to be torn down and molded, Kakashi could only murmur words he himself didn’t believe. 

He should’ve known the despair was just as fleeting as triumph, just as fleeting as every other emotion Naruto felt that wasn’t loneliness, but it wouldn’t have prepared him anyways. 

“He’s just like you. How is he  _ just like you _ ?” 

He was sobbing, fingers gripping the dirt and grass in front of the grave. It was getting hard to breathe through the mask. “My ninja way,” he gasped. 

It sounded a lot like a promise that couldn’t be broken. 

Gai wasn’t surprised to find him at the Memorial Stone every morning, had found him like that for well over a decade. But he didn’t like it. Didn’t like watching Kakashi wilt before the tombstone like the flowers he took with him, traces of decomposition being the only sign something had been left behind. 

“He can join my team, Kakashi,” his friend offered, his trademark grin wiped from his face. He almost sounded desperate. “Lee and he could get along and Neji, he could challenge Sasuke well. It wouldn’t be balanced but the Sandaime--”

Kakashi just shook his head, curled further over the flower in his hands.

“I can’t lose him again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooo what do you guys think so far?
> 
> Hope everyone's staying safe! <3


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